


A Light In the Darkness

by coolbreeze1



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-12
Updated: 2011-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-24 13:36:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolbreeze1/pseuds/coolbreeze1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheppard finds himself in a deep, dark place and has only himself to rely on until he can find the light again. Literally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Light In the Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tridget for the Sheppard H/C 2010 Secret Santa. Huge thanks to my beta, everybetty"!!

Part 1

John saw the body first, a man pinned to the ceiling and staring down at him with sightless black eyes. Blood covered his head and neck. He knew him. He blinked, trying to place the face. He knew that man.

 _Why was the man not falling?_

The thought broke through the haze, and he sucked in a deep breath. The man was pinned to the ceiling looking down, but… No. The ceiling was on the floor, and the man was on the ceiling.

He shook his head, then groaned at the immediate assault of pain, dizziness, and nausea. Something was biting into his legs and shoulders, and his arms were stretched out above him, hanging and too heavy to move. He was the one on the ceiling, once the floor. He blinked again, looking around, and spotted the front seats of the truck, the steering wheel, the windshield cracked and splattered with red. Everything upside down.

 _Accident._

Sound rushed in, and John jerked at the vibrating thud of a bomb detonating nearby. He looked down—up—at his waist, and saw he was still strapped into his seat, the belts cutting off the circulation to his legs. His head was throbbing, and he could feel blood wet and matted in his hair.

Not an accident. An attack. A bomb that had overturned the truck he’d been riding in. The driver had been killed instantly. John’s eyes drifted back to the dead man’s face. The driver. That’s how he knew the man. He was driving them to…

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to concentrate past the pain. Truck. He was in a truck with…he didn’t know who he was with. The memory of where they were going and what they were doing was there, taunting him, but it dissipated as soon as he tried to grab onto it. Gunfire outside kept beat with the pounding in his head. He needed to get out of the truck, or at least out of his seat. He lifted heavy arms again and fumbled at the buckle. There were two straps across his chest attached to the one on his waist, and no apparent release button for either of them.

A ripping metal sound next to him had him grabbing hopelessly at straps that would not release him from the seat, and he moaned at the light that suddenly pierced the dim interior of the truck. Hands were pulling at the broken door, cursing at the stubborn metal.

 _Escape. Danger. Get out._

The thought rushed through him, adrenaline riding its wake, and John kicked out at the seat in front of him as he tried to find purchase or brace himself or something.

 _Escape._

 _Get out._

He tugged at the straps again, biting his lip at the cry of panic threatening to pour out of him.

 _Out. Out, out, outoutoutoutout._

“Got a live one!” a voice screamed, and John winced at the hot breath against his cheek. He turned his head to look at the man, but his view was blocked by a large torso. Hands grabbed at his waist and shoulders, and the stranger cursed the straps pinning John to the truck before sitting back and pulling a knife.

Before John could flail in panic at the blade swiping toward him, he heard fabric rip and a sudden give in pressure in one of the straps over his shoulders. Seconds later, both shoulder straps disappeared. The hands were once again digging at his waist, and then that pressure disappeared as well. He sighed in relief, then moaned as the world suddenly spun around him. The man was cursing him now, pulling and twisting him with rough hands. The pain in John’s head spiked, white flashing through his vision.

Seconds later, he came to, if he’d passed out at all. He wasn’t sure. He rolled, feeling wet ground beneath him, just as his stomach bucked. A foot was kicking or poking his side, but John’s whole world had zeroed in on the patch of mud in front of him, covered now in sour vomit. At the sight of it, his stomach cramped, and he retched again, choking on the little bit of spit and bile that finally came out.

“Sick,” a voice hissed, picking him up by the collar of his shirt and pulling him away.

John closed his eyes at the movement. His head felt heavy and too big, and like he was swimming underwater. The rest of his body was a boneless mass of limbs and under no control of his. He felt himself being dragged across the ground but didn’t dare open his eyes until the movement stopped.

“You sure he’s alive,” another voice asked.

Forcing himself to open his eyes, John looked up toward the sound of the voices and spotted two men wearing dark green uniforms standing over him. They were crouched behind the front of the overturned truck, their gazes focused on something behind them.

“He just vomited. He’s alive,” the first voice answered, the one who had cut him out of the seatbelt and pulled him from the truck. The man was big, like he’d spend most of his gym time at the bench press, and a thick ragged scar ran from just below his eye to the edge of his jaw, scar tissue puffing out in angry red tones.

“We got four live ones from the other trucks,” the second guy answered. He looked scrawny next to Bench Presser, but size was all relative. Like the guys on the football field who looked small next to the offensive line, but off the field were twice as big as everyone else.

“Football,” he muttered. It seemed important, like he should be remembering something about football.

“What?” Bench Presser asked, giving John’s leg a light kick.

John groaned instead. Football didn’t make sense. He pressed his head into the mud and grass, feeling waves of heat from the engine next to him brush against cold skin. The grass was cold and smelled of gasoline.

“More rain,” Scrawny said.

John looked up into dark gray clouds. Scrawny shifted, and John saw the black barrel of a rifle in his hands.

“We should get him with the others; get out of here before reinforcements arrive.”

“Right,” Bench Presser replied. He knelt next to John and began undoing his vest. John swatted at his hands, but the man ignored him. He flipped John over and ripped the vest off, almost dislocating John’s shoulder in the process. John whimpered, and the big man rolled him again, fumbling at the buckle around John’s waist.

“No,” he cried out, squirming as a jolt of adrenaline rushed through him. He kicked his legs at the air as he tried to roll away.

“Stop it,” Bench Presser snarled, raising his arm and smacking John in the face.

The world faded again in a fog of pain. When he came back to himself, he was lying sprawled on the grass, rain pelting his face in a steady drone. Bench Presser had his vest in one hand, and his belt, along with his knife and holster, in the other.

Disarmed. He was disarming him, stripping him of weapons. Bench Presser tossed John’s things to the side then proceeded to pat him down, clearing out his pockets and even finding the knife on the inside of his boot.

Sudden gunfire interrupted the search, and both men holding John ducked down, taking cover behind the truck. The rain came down harder, large drops smacking almost painfully against John’s head. Another bomb detonated, far enough away that he didn’t feel the blast of hot air from the explosion, but close enough that the ground shook beneath him, tying his stomach up in knots again. He rolled and curled in on himself, grateful when Bench Presser took no notice.

It was the retort of P90 fire that finally pulled John out of his haze. He opened his eyes and looked up to see that Bench Presser had figured out how to fire his weapon. He was firing continuously, his face filled with glee at the power in his hands. Beneath the automatic weapon fire, John heard other guns firing back at them, bombs exploding, people shouting.

Scrawny screamed suddenly and dropped to the ground behind him, writhing in the dirt. John turned toward him, but his eyes fastened on Bench Presser staring at his friend in surprise.

 _Escape, escape, escape._

He kicked his leg out with more strength than he would have thought possible, and smiled when the big man cried out and dropped to the ground. More shots from whoever was firing at them rang out. Bench Presser turned to John, his face a mixture of panic and hatred, then pounced.

Meaty hands wrapped around John’s neck, squeezing. John bucked against the pressure, opening his mouth to scream or breathe or something. His captor was grunting, his face turning red from the effort of choking John out. John felt his arms and legs begin to tingle, and his chest bucked against the ground as his lungs attempted to pull in air. He pounded his fists against the other man’s arms, uselessly.

 _Was this what it felt like to die?_ The thought slithered to the forefront, clear and resonating in his mind as the sound of gunfire and explosions faded, replaced by the sound of a rushing river.

 _Like that one scene from Lord of the Rings, where the river rose up, forming watery horses that pounded along the river bed, sweeping away anything in its path. Odd._ He’d always liked that scene but why he was thinking of it now, he had no idea. He felt more than heard a gurgling cry in the back of his throat, and thought he’d heard a similar sound before, from other men about to die. The gray skies above him were growing darker, the storm swirling in anger. John blinked, feeling his hands go lax around Bench Presser’s wrists, and then a concussive explosion threw the world into pitch black.

oooooooooooooooooooo

He came awake abruptly, throwing his head back as he gasped for air.

 _What the hell?_ He could still feel Bench Presser’s hands around his neck, no longer squeezing. He coughed hard, tears streaming from his eyes as his lungs pulled in desperately needed oxygen. A weight was growing on his chest and he squirmed, trying to get out from underneath it.

A clap of thunder erupted overhead and the skies opened up again. The smell of gasoline was strong, and moisture covered John’s face. Rain? Gasoline? Maybe blood. He could smell iron. He opened his eyes to see Bench Presser lying on top of him and not moving. A ragged piece of metal was poking out of the man’s back, and blood pumped from the wound, soaking into both of their clothes.

“Off,” John whispered, pushing at the dead man’s body with heavy, uncoordinated arms. He felt a hard lump in the man’s breast pocket, and he pulled out the small black pocket knife used to cut through the seatbelt straps. John grabbed it, holding in a death grasp. Fight—he would fight if he had to. His hearing was popping in and out, and the gasoline smell was getting worse. It was making him nauseous. He could also smell something burning, and he turned toward the crashed truck, blinking at the flames pouring out of the engine.

Gasoline. Fire. Bombs, gunfire, explosions. He had to get away from here, wherever here was. He was outside, on a road, surrounded by trees.

 _Trees._ Trees were safe. Trees were cover. With a monumental effort, he slid Bench Presser’s body off of his and rolled to his knees. His ears were still stuffed, like they hadn’t adjusted to the altitude, and the ground in front of him swam in and out of focus. He shoved the knife into his cargo pants pocket and crawled forward, concentrating on moving one hand forward, then a knee, then the other hand, then the other knee. Trees. He had to reach the trees.

He glanced back and saw the smoke pouring from the truck, flames licking the undercarriage, oblivious of the rain. _There was a man inside there,_ he suddenly thought, and his heart seized in his chest. He saw the man staring down at him again, and it took another second for him to remember that man was already dead. He was the driver. They’d been in a truck, driving somewhere—John couldn’t remember where, exactly, or who else had been with them.

 _Were they dead too?_

More gunfire sputtered around him, and he caught movement out of the corner of his eyes as people ran and dove for cover, firing at each other with him in the middle. The heat of the fire behind him was crackling in the rain. When he reached the tree line, he pulled himself to his feet and lurched forward, deeper into cover. The trees in front of him blurred together, then split apart, and the sound of rain grew louder.

He slipped in the mud and fell hard, and it took a second for him to peel his eyes open again. He was still sliding in the mud, down a slight incline. He pressed his hands against the ground to stop himself, but the hill shifted, propelling him downward with alarming speed.

“No, stop!” he slurred. He rolled onto his stomach and looked up the hill just as deafening explosion filled the air. Flames leapt into the air above the trees, sucking all other sound into a vacuum.

The fire of the exploding truck disappeared almost as quickly as it had come, but the storm seemed to double its fury in response. John was flung around as his legs hit a rock, and he found himself sliding head first through trees. He heard the roar of rainwater and mud streaming together in a flash flood only seconds before he plunged into the ice cold torrent and was carried swiftly away from the road. The current swept him around, flipping him, and he opened his mouth to scream only for mud and water to pour down his throat. He hit something hard, and his body flipped up out of the stream. He coughed and gagged in time with thunder clapping overhead, and he wrapped his arms protectively around his head as more debris slapped against him.

He saw the gaping black hole in front of him at the last minute, and he kicked out in a panic, as if that would stop his momentum. A moment later, the hole swallowed him, along with the raging torrent of mud, water, rocks, and branches he was riding into pitch black.

oooooooooooooooooooo

John woke to overwhelming blackness and the sensation of the unseen ground beneath him tilting and sliding away from him. He pushed up to his knees, then gagged. There was no sound again, just the rushing of water. Images of a truck exploding and a muddy river carrying him through a thick forest flitted through his mind, but they were soon pushed out by the all-consuming throbbing in his head, spreading down his neck and back.

He swallowed back the urge to throw up and squeezed his eyes shut against the dizziness. Sight seemed to have very little to do with the world spinning like a rickety, heaving carnival ride. He eased himself to his side and curled up into a ball, cradling his head. One hand brushed the side of his head above his hear, causing a sharp, agonizing burn to kick up. The area was tacky and raw, and John moaned at the onslaught of pain.

The dark was impenetrable, and the sound of water continuous. He curled tighter into a ball against the cold, hard ground and let himself go.

oooooooooooooooooooo

He dreamed of the dead man in the truck, only he wasn’t dead. He was alive and gabby, pointing out every rock and tree and turn in the road. John remembered not caring so much about the scenery but being infinitely amused by the young man’s enthusiasm. There were others in the truck with him, but their faces were hidden in shadow in the dream. John sensed that he didn’t know them very well, that his focus was entirely on the truck driver.

He woke up abruptly, flailing his arms then groaning when the movement felt like a kick in the head. His stomach cramped, and no amount of deep breathing could stop him from throwing up.

He collapsed in a heap a few minutes later. Head injury—he’d hurt his head, badly. That much was clear. He brought a shaking hand up to his face and rubbed at his eyes, mentally chasing the white spots caused by the pressure against his eyeballs. When he opened his eyes again, his thoughts stuttered at the utter blackness.

Was he blind? He swallowed, grimacing at the sour taste of vomit, and waved a hand in front of his face. He felt the air shift and heard the sound of his hand whistling past, but his vision remained unchanged.

“Not… not blind, not happening,” he muttered.

His voice sounded loud, immediately setting off a steady throb in his head. The sound of water was still there, although maybe not as loud.

“Where…?” he started to call out, then winced when the sound echoed around him. He was in a confined space somewhere. He sniffed the damp air, smelling mold and dirt and something weirdly metallic.

 _Underground?_ God, let him be underground and not blind. If he was underground somewhere, that would explain the pitch black threatening to drown him. He crawled forward toward the water, sweeping the ground in front of him as he went. It was hard and uneven—rocky—and the pressure dug against his knees.

He jerked in surprised when his hand hit cold water, and he almost passed out again. _Slow—move slow, John._ He reached out again, letting his fingers trail through the rushing water. A river. He’d been swept into a river of mud and rocks and other debris caused by a rainstorm. Rain. He remembered the rain, pelting against the windshield of the truck.

He felt himself falling forward into the water, and he jerked back with a cry. Focus, he had to focus. Flames drilled into his head, and he crawled forward again just long enough to scoop a small handful of water. He managed three more sips before his arms were shaking too badly that he had to scoot back and lay down.

He curled up again on the stone floor, blinking at the darkness. He would rest for a few minutes. Just a few minutes.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Despite the mask of black, he knew he’d slept for longer than he’d intended. He stretched slowly, sighing in relief at the dull pain in the side of his head. It still hurt, but it wasn’t the sharp, breath stealing agony of before. He rolled toward the water, finding the rushing water just a foot away from where he’d fallen asleep, and he drank greedily. He was suddenly dying of thirst.

And hungry, but he didn’t trust his stomach enough to eat anything yet, so he drank as much water as he could. After a few minutes, he turned away from the water and waved his arm in front of him until he found a boulder to lean against. It wasn’t comfortable, but it gave him a moment to sit back and take stock.

He patted his chest and blinked in surprise when all he felt was his damp t-shirt. No vest. His hands moved immediately for his handgun. No holster either—not even his belt. A memory flashed through his mind, a large man stripping him of weapons, then shooting his P90 at whoever was attacking them.

Pain lanced through this temples and he pulled his knees up, crossing his arms over the top and letting his head fall forward. He was exhausted and cold, weaponless. The attack came back to him in vague snippets. His team had emerged onto this planet in a wide, shallow cave a dozen or so feet deep onto a mountainous, rainforest world. They’d met people, although the details of it were vague.

He sighed, looking around. The darkness was endless. If anything, he should start a fire or something. He reached for his vest pocket again and scowled when his fingers hit his long sleeve t-shirt.

“Damn it!” he growled. His voice echoed around him, and he dropped his head to his knees again.

He hurt, everywhere. Not life-threatening hurt, just bruised and battered and stiff and achy. He sat back again, running his hands down his shins and feeling bumps and warm skin that were probably swelling bruises. His neck hurt more than anything else. In his mind, he saw the man firing his P90 jumping on him and wrapping thick fingers around his neck.

The convoy. They’d been in a convoy of trucks when they were attacked. He didn’t remember the bomb that had thrown their vehicle in the air and flipped it on its head, but he remembered waking upside down, the seat belt digging into his lap and shoulder. He ran his fingers over his shoulders but couldn’t feel the bruises there. They were attacked—he didn’t know by whom, or why.

 _My team._

The thought battered through everything else, and John felt his chest constrict in sudden pain. His team. Had they been there?

“Ronon? Teyla?” his voice echoed. “McKay?”

He couldn’t remember if they’d been in the truck with him. He remembered the driver—a young kid who wanted to go to school when his military service was over to study the forest.

McKay would have scoffed at that, but he didn’t remember McKay saying anything. He shivered, wrapping his arms around his body to stave off the icy cold that had suddenly gripped him. He had no idea where he was, and no light to see where he might even begin to figure out where to go. If his teammates were with him, one of them would have said something by now.

He had crawled away from the truck, knowing it was going to explode. Had his teammates still been inside? The thought made his stomach curl in on itself and he sucked in a deep breath against the rising nausea.

“No,” he rasped, pressing his forehead against his arms. They weren’t in the truck. He was sure they weren’t in the truck. He would never have left them there. He had crawled alone into the woods, then run, then slipped, falling literally into darkness.

He must have been washed down the mountainside and into an underground cave, and it was a miracle he was even alive. He didn’t remember crawling out of the river, but he had, obviously. He was alive, if bruised and battered.

And freezing. He was shaking harder now, and he rubbed his hands against his arms. His team hadn’t been there. They hadn’t washed down the mountain side with him. He swallowed, clenching his teeth against the shuddering spasms now wracking through him. They weren’t in the truck either. He was sure of that. They couldn’t have been in the truck.

“Get a grip, John,” he whispered into the darkness. Sitting up was requiring a monumental amount of energy and he slid to the ground, rolling onto his side.

He remembered a town with towering, white-capped mountains behind it. His team was there, he thought. They’d been meeting the locals, pleasantly surprised at their relatively high level of technology. One of the men had been telling John about their attempts to build machines that flew and invited John to the warehouse where they were building them.

His eyes flew open at the memory. He’d gone with the man in a convoy of trucks, alone. His team had stayed in the town, exploring other areas. He’d been alone when they were attacked, presumably still safe. Hopefully looking for him.

There were no sounds, other than the water. John closed his eyes again, seeing no difference in the darkness.

oooooooooooooooooooo

It was hard to gauge if he’d fallen asleep that time. He didn’t think so. He was still shaking, but maybe not as badly. He was still cold. His head was still pounding, and his body still felt stiff and sore. Movement of any kind still made his stomach clench, but at least he had stopped throwing up.

He was thirstier. That was different. He pushed himself up to his knees, and abused muscles screamed in protest. It was like moving through tar. He crawled forward, toward the sound of the water and drank enough to make his gut ache. Hunger was lurking, just below the surface now. He turned back and crawled toward the rock he’d been leaning against but missed it.

“Stupid,” he muttered, waving his arm in front of him. He crawled a few more feet and took another swipe at the air.

His knuckles brushed against stone and he jerked his arm back with a hiss. He scooted forward slowly this time, pushing against air for a long minute before he found the rock again. It wasn’t the one he’d been sitting next to, he realized. It was a wall, the side of the tunnel no doubt carved by the river over millions of years.

He patted as much of it as he could reach, slid down a few feet, then began patting again, taking in as much detail as his palms and fingers were able to convey. The rock was cold but not wet, and bare of any vegetation.

“Of course it is, moron,” he muttered. His voice echoed around him, and the returning sound was somewhat reassuring. Like someone was answering him back. Like he wasn’t so completely lost and alone.

He moved again, and began the same sweep with his arms when the rock under his left hand suddenly disappeared. He stumbled a little, then froze, bracing himself. No rock. He brought his hand back and felt out the edge of gap, tracing it from the ground up four or five feet, then across another four feet, then back to the ground.

A tunnel.

Or a cave. Certainly a passageway of some kind. He crawled into it, letting his senses stretch out for any indication of what might be ahead of him. His eyes were beginning to ache, and he realized he was straining them despite the darkness. It was an almost desperate instinct against the possibility of blindness.

“Hello?”

His voice didn’t echo in the tunnel. Even the sound of the river had changed, sounding much farther away than he knew he had traveled. He continued into the cave or tunnel, letting one hand on the wall be his guide. It was slightly warmer in this area, and he shivered at the change in temperature. The tunnel walls were smoother than the other rock wall he’d explored. He inched forward, breathing in damp, musty air.

The tunnel curved, and John blinked, his heart stuttering in his chest. There, in front of him. He waved his arm at the lighter patch of black, banging his knuckles again on the rock wall. He wasn’t imagining it, though. He crawled a few feet farther and saw the blackness melt slightly into a midnight blue.

He couldn’t be imagining it. He squeezed his eyes shut, letting the inky blackness flood his vision again. For added effect, he covered his face with both hands. There—total darkness. He sucked in a deep breath, willing himself to relax, then opened his eyes and dropped his hands away.

The darkness shifted. It was still too dark to see anything, but it wasn’t the same pitch black. He scrambled forward, immediately banging his shoulder into the wall and cried out.

“Easy, John,” he whispered. “Take it slow.”

He resumed his cautious crawl, trying to ignore the adrenaline rush now pumping through his veins. He believed he hadn’t been blind, but that had been based more on a desperate hope than any facts. Now, though, there was light ahead. He could feel it. The midnight blue shifted again, still dark but definitely not black. A few minutes later, John began to pick out the inconsistencies in the walls of the tunnel—deep pockets of shadow in the nooks and crevices of the uneven surface. As a test, he spotted what he thought was a rock sitting in the middle of his path and he reached out for it, whooping in triumph a second later when he held it in his hand.

It was hard not to scramble forward after that, but his body was sore enough that it forced him to be cautious. As he rounded the next curve, a pale glow came into view, illuminating the water-carved tunnel walls around him.

Light. Honest to God _light._

The tunnel opened up into a slightly wider space, and John finally found the source of his precious light. A half dozen crystals were growing out of the side of the cave wall, the largest one the size and width of his leg. The light they gave was steady, filling up the entire space, and as he approached them, he felt heat radiating outward.

He shivered, remembering suddenly that he was cold. He had been cold for a while now. Tentatively, he reached a hand out to the largest crystal. When it didn’t explode or send a bolt of lightning through him, he sighed in relief. It was hot, but not unbearably so.

He scrunched up against it, letting the warmth of the crystals soak through his clothes. He looked around the small cave, guessing it was roughly the size of a four-man tent. The tunnel leading to the river was wide and dark, but on the other side of the room was another tunnel opening.

The light and heat had unexpectedly lifted his spirits, making his situation seem much less dire. Maybe he could get out of this. Maybe he could survive down here. He twisted around, letting the heat ooze into a different part of his body. He would just rest a few more minutes, warm up a little, and then he’d continue exploring. He could always come back to this room if he found nothing.

With reluctance, he pushed away from the warm crystals. He wouldn’t explore far. He was beyond tired and trying to do too much would just make his situation worse. He began to crawl, and smiled when more light appeared ahead. Crawling faster, he reached the next room with minutes.

And stopped in amazement.

The tunnel opened up into a large cavern. The far side was filled with a deep, glowing pool of water. The water was clear, allowing John to see easily to the very bottom. Hundreds of crystals grew up from its depths, covering the far wall of the cavern completely and casting the entire space with white-blue light.

It was warm too—almost hot. He’d been relieved at the small amount of heat the crystals in the four-man tent room had given him, but now he was basking in it. He inched forward, dipping his hands into the water and laughed. It was hot—as in hot-tub hot—and he suddenly envisioned himself taking a dive into the water.

He had the urge to drink a handful of water but he shook his head. The river water, at least, had been flowing rapidly, and it had been cold. This water was not moving. It didn’t look or smell stagnant, but John thought he’d better not risk it. The heat would also breed bacteria, and he could always crawl back to the river later. On a hunch, he reached into the pool for a smaller crystal growing near the surface. Leaning his body weight into it, he felt the crystal give then break off.

He held it up, grinning when the light didn’t fade. Portable. The glowing crystals were portable. That made traveling back to the river for water even less of an issue. He scooted away from the water and curled up against the wall. The small crystal was hot against his chest. He was reluctant to close his eyes, some small irrational part of his brain afraid that the light would be no more than a dream and he would wake up to pitch black again, but his body had other ideas, and he slipped into a deep sleep moments later.

oooooooooooooooooooo

It was the smell that woke him up, but it was a slimy wetness on the side of his face that sent his heartbeat into triple time. He opened his eyes to a brown, grunting stone shaking next to him.

“Shit!” he screamed, when the stone waddled up to his face. A pink tongue slipped out, almost hitting him in the eye, and he scrambled backward.

The stone was, obviously, not a stone. The brown skin was tough and uneven, the legs short and almost hidden beneath the massive, round body. It almost looked like a turtle in that sense. The head, however, was a different matter. John sat up and pushed back toward the wall, away from the creature. The creature seemed just as startled to find another living thing down in the caves and it squealed, scrambling away from John and toward the glowing pool of water.

John had woken up earlier, the broken crystal still clasped in his hand and still glowing, although not as brightly as before. They retained their light, it seemed, at least for a few hours. He’d also woken up to a new bruise throbbing in his thigh, and his eyes had, literally, welled with tears of joy when he’d patted down his pockets and found the knife he’d snatched off Bench Presser, just before his trip underground. He had a knife, and now he had light. He had broken off three more crystals and traveled back to the river, finally seeing where he’d first woken up. It was a miracle he was alive. The river was about eight feet wide and moving steadily, although it was not as loud as it had been. Was that because he could finally see it? Or because the storm outside had passed and the river was no longer being fed by torrents of rain?

The far side was a solid rock wall, and John knew he was lucky to have found a place in the dark to climb out. The memory was vague and he realized he’d probably never remember it completely. He had lived, though. He was still alive. He drank as much of the river water as he could, figuring that if it was going to make him sick, it was too late now. He’d already drank too much of it. He’d filled his stomach, but that hadn’t been quite enough to stave off the hunger pangs. He’d also cleaned off the blood matted in his hair, wincing as he traced the swollen gash just above his temple.

By the time he’d crawled back to the glowing pool, he was shivering and cold again, and the sauna heat of the cavern was one step away from heaven. He knew he’d have to stop sleeping at some point and start taking some proactive steps to better his situation, but he was just so damned tired. He’d blamed the head injury and vowed to find food first thing the next time he’d woken up.

And now he was staring at a grunting turtle rock. The creature sniffed the air, then clacked its wide jaws, revealing a row of thick flat teeth bookended by two longer, pointed vampire fangs. The creature swayed, took a tentative step toward John, and grunted again.

“I don’t think so,” John muttered. He patted down his pockets, finding the knife and unfolding the blade from the hilt. The creature tilted its head, and John decided the teeth looked more like ones that might be found on a saber-toothed tiger than a vampire. Too big, and slightly curved, but still just as dangerous looking.

At that moment, his stomach growled, loud and demanding. He was not just hungry. He was ravished. Were he McKay, he’d probably be in full-blown hypoglycemic shock at this point. The saber-toothed turtle rock pawed at the ground. John looked at the knife in his hand, then the creature, then the knife again.

He’d seen the cartoons as a kid, where the hungry wolf looked at the other characters and they turned into juicy steaks. It was funny as a cartoon. It was serious business down here. The creature didn’t change into steak, but it might as well have. Hunger overpowered any rational thought, and John sprang to his feet with a hoarse scream. The creature screeched as John lunged forward, moving faster than he would have guessed. Or else his reflexes were off. The thing scampered across the room to a small hole in the wall John had not previously noticed and disappeared into the shadows.

He was too hungry to let it get away, so he dived into the hole, envisioning himself carving the creature up into a feast, gnawing on its legs and ribs until his stomach exploded from too much food. It would be like Thanksgiving, only better, because he wasn’t usually this hungry before Thanksgiving.

The tunnel wasn’t very long, and John moved quickly, ignoring the new bruises he was adding to his knees and hands as he crawled. He caught a glimpse of the creature ahead of him and then he emerged into another cavern, the light so bright it was almost painful. The creature was making a beeline for the other side, and John dove, landing on top of it. The thing grunted and bucked, trying to throw John’s weight off its back. It was the size of a large dog and, John realized, stronger than he’d first assumed.

He still had the knife in his hand, and he plunged it down. The blade hit the rough exterior and stopped dead, and John’s grip on the hilt slipped. He scrambled, tightening his hold on the knife and banging it against the creature’s skin.

Not even a dent. The creature squealed again and finally managed to throw John off balance. As he slid to the side, he glimpsed a large black eye staring back at him, wide with panic.

 _Head, go for the head,_ he thought. He rolled to his knees and lunged for the creature again, swiping the blade down toward where he guessed was its brain. Again, the blade glanced off the creature’s thick skin. Its jaws opened wide, and John jerked his hand back only seconds before the teeth snapped back together. The movement threw his center of balance off enough that when the creature bucked again, he fell forward, face planting into the stone. With another grunting squeal, the creature writhed out of his grip and scampered away, disappearing from sight.

John lay on the ground, heaving in air. Sweat poured from his face and soaked into his hair. He was hungrier than ever, and he wondered how much energy he’d just wasted on his attempt to catch the saber-toothed turtle. Indestructible saber-toothed turtle. He closed his eyes. The adrenaline rush of the battle against the creature leaked out of him quickly, and his head began to throb, thumping painfully in his forehead with every heartbeat. The brightness of the room was piercing through his eyelids as well, making the headache worse. He threw an arm over his face, whimpering in relief at the darkness.

He lay there for a few more minutes, but the headache wasn’t diminishing. His stomach was twisting itself into knots now as well, and the heat of the room was making him nauseous. He had to get out of here. It was at least twice as hot in here than in the glowing pool room. He rolled to his side and opened his eyes, blinking at the sudden brightness.

When the room finally came into focus, he gaped at the sight. This particular cavern was huge—possibly endless—and filled with giant crisscrossing crystals growing out of the ground and walls at all different angles. Most of the crystals were the size of large trees.

“Superman,” he whispered. He’d fallen down a hole in the ground and landed in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Sweat dripped from his forehead into his eyes, making them sting.

He had the sudden urge to touch the crystals, but when he stood up, he swayed in dizziness. He had no idea if it was the head injury, the heat, or his everlasting exhaustion—probably a combination of all three—but the room tilted and blurred, and he dropped painfully back to the ground.

 _Get out,_ a voice whispered to him. He obeyed it, knowing he had to get away from this room, beautiful as it was, before he passed out. The small tunnel he’d crawled through wavered in front of him, but he pressed forward, desperate for the relief the darkness offered.

“You are screwed up, John,” he said. Hours ago, he would have done anything to chase the darkness away, and now he couldn’t get back to it fast enough. He made it to the glowing pool room, and sat back against the cool stone. His t-shirt was soaked through with sweat. He wanted to dive into the pool. The crystals gave it a bluish glow, making it appear much cooler than it actually was, but he knew diving into it would probably make him warmer, not cooler.

His stomach growled again and he cursed. He needed food. Now. He glanced around the cavern, searching out the darker corners off to the sides. He hadn’t noticed the tunnel leading to the giant crystals before. What else had he missed in here? He squinted against the throb in his head. He felt disconnected, knowing he needed to be much more focused and on top of his game if he was going to survive but not quite sure how to will his body into action.

The far side of the cavern looked like it twisted around into another area and he forced himself to his feet. As he walked around the glowing pool, he saw that the cavern narrowed but continued on into shadows. The crystals were limited to the area in the pool, so John returned, broke one off, then headed back to the darker area.

Had he not brought a glowing crystal with him to light his way, he would have fallen face first into the lake. The smaller glowing-pool cavern widened suddenly about thirty feet in, opening up into a giant cave, if it could even be called a cave. It was huge. The word cave made him think of a small area dug into the side of mountain. In here, the ceiling was too high and to dark to see. The black water of the lake extended into darkness as well, although he could see isolated patches of growing crystals poking out of the lake’s depths.

An underground lake. All he needed now was a boat. He laughed at the inanity of that. What the hell would he do with a boat? What he really needed was food. And rescue.

A movement caught his eye, and he jerked his head around, swinging the crystal around to light as much of the area as he could. Among the rocks along the edge of the lake, he saw a translucent white lizard slither up and over a rock, heading for the water. Its tail was long, making it look almost like a snake. He probably would have thought it was a snake had he not seen its legs gripping the side of the boulder as it climbed. He transferred the crystal to his left hand and dug out this knife with the other.

Food. Every creature in his Fortress of Solitude was potential food. His stomach growled in agreement and he stepped forward. He scanned the rocks for any sign of the lizard snake, his hands shaking at the effort to hold both the crystal and the knife up. God, he needed to eat. He’d never felt so hungry in his life.

The lizard snake appeared again, three boulders in front of him. He jumped without thinking, landing on the boulder next to it and slipped as soon as his foot hit the wet, algae covered stone. He banged his shin hard and cried out, dropping his knife in the water in his scramble not to plunge head first into the lake.

“Shit!” he screamed, watching the lizard snake slide down the side of the boulder and slip soundlessly into to the water. It flicked its tail, carving esses in the black water and bobbing its head right and left. Within seconds, it had disappeared.

John hung his head, pushing himself to a sitting position on the rock and rubbing at his leg. He could feel the bruise forming already. It was also bleeding, but not much. He’d lost yet another chance at a meal, and now he’d lost his knife. Cautiously, he leaned his head over the side of the boulder and peered into the dark water. He needed that knife. He dipped the crystal into the water and blew out his breath in relief when he saw the water was only inches deep and his knife clearly visible in front of him. As he reached for it, he shifted the crystal light and got a glimpse of creatures scattering away from the light.

He froze, holding his breath. The creatures had looked a lot like little lobsters or crawfish, and there’d been at least two or three of them. He grabbed his knife and climbed back over the rocks, a new thought forming in his mind. Once he was back onto relatively flat ground, he eased himself down and undid the laces in one of his boots.

If there were crawfish in the lake, he could fish for them. He pulled out the lace and cut the plastic ends off, giving him just under 72 inches of cord. The lace itself was little more than dozens of threads wound together. Using light from the crystal, he peeled back the outer shell to reveal the individual threads underneath. His hands were shaking from hunger, making it difficult to work. He bit his lip and tried to concentrate, pushing the pangs in his gut and his throbbing headache to the back of his mind.

“Come on,” he muttered. His fingers felt fat and clumsy, but he finally managed to pinch one of the threads and pull it out.

He sat back, taking a deep breath. He was sweating again, and he rubbed at the beads threatening to slide into his eyes. He needed bait now. He glanced around, wondering what he could use. The rock next to the crystal was covered in moss on one side, so he scraped a small wad of it off with his knife. He had no idea what crawfish type creatures ate, but he shrugged, tying one end of his new fishing string to it.

At the last minute, he pulled his pant leg up and wiped some of the blood from the cut on his shin off with the moss. _Sea creatures liked blood,_ he thought. They could smell it in the water, like sharks. He had no idea if it would work, but what the hell? He had little to lose at this point. If the bloody moss didn’t work, he’d try again with a new wad.

He crawled over to the edge of the lake with his fishing line and dipped his crystal into the water. Once again, the little creatures scattered into the shadows. John smiled and set the crystal back on the shore. They liked the darkness—he could work with that. He wrapped one end of the fishing line around his finger, then dropped the moss end into the water.

As hungry as he was, he still expected to wait for a while before he got a nibble. Within seconds of dropping the moss into the water, his finger jerked as something bit the other end.

“Hell, yeah!” he cried out. He tugged at the line, feeling something heavy on the other end. Before the thing had a chance to eat and run, John lifted the line with one hand and grabbed at the crawfish with his other hand.

It squirmed in his hand, but he held on tight. It was small—little more than three inches long—but it was food. He sat back, bringing the crystal around to illuminate his catch. It looked like a miniature lobster, and the thought immediately caused his mouth to salivate.

“Okay, okay, okay,” he muttered, still staring at the crawfish. Its shell was white and hard, and its claws flailed in the air like it was drowning. Eat it. He had to eat it.

He swallowed, wondering if he could eat it raw. Would it make him sick? A fire would be better. He could cut it open and fry the meat, kill off any germs the lobster might be carrying.

“Fire,” he called out. His voice echoed in the large cavern and disappeared over the black lake. He was trained for this. He knew how to start a fire. It was survival 101. He stared at the rocks, his mind going blank.

“Think, John. Just…damn it…”

The creature wiggled in his fingers and almost broke free of his grip. He rubbed the sweat from his forehead again, grimacing at how badly his hands were shaking. He’d need two hands to build a fire. He grabbed the smaller rocks around him and arranged them in a circle, creating a pen for the crawfish. He dropped it on its back, and watched it squirm around a little more. Its movements had slowed with its growing weakness.

He set the crystal between it and the lake, hoping that would deter it from running to the water if it escaped its pen. He rubbed his hands on his pants, then folded them across his chest, trying to still the quaking limbs. It wasn’t just his hands now. He could feel the shakiness in his entire body, like he was cold, and yet sweat continued to bead on his face and drip down his neck.

Fire. He needed to make a fire. He scrounged around, scraping off more moss, but he scowled when he mashed it in his fingers and felt how damp it was. As he turned around, he saw his dinner claw its way over its pen and dash toward the lake, oblivious to the crystal in its path.

“No!” John dove for it. He landed hard on the rocks, the edge of his rock pen digging into his ribs. The crawfish dropped into the water, gone. He grabbed the crystal, all his anger zeroing in on the light that had not kept his dinner from escaping. With a roar, he threw it against the rocky wall behind him and watched it explode into a hundred, shattering sparks.

John dropped his head to the ground, closing his eyes. Acid was burning a hole through his empty stomach, the side that had hit his stupid rock pen was throbbing in time with his head, and his elbow was burning from where it had impacted against the ground, warm blood dripping through the fabric of his shirt. And he was still shaking.

 _Survival is a mental game, a conscious act of will._

The voice floated through his mind, followed by the image of one of his first survival instructors soon after he’d been commissioned into the Air Force. John lay on the ground, desperation looming over him, threatening to drag him down into an abyss darker than the riverside cave he’d woken up in. He sucked in another breath, his body still shaking against the cold, hard ground, and closed his eyes.

 _Live._

He flinched. For a moment, he thought he’d heard Ronon’s voice. What would the big guy think, when they finally found him, if he was lying dead next to this black lake? Ronon, who had lived through seven years of hell. Compared to that, this was nothing. The closest thing to a predator John had seen so far was the saber-toothed turtle rock creature, who’d been more afraid of John than anything else. Hardly worth curling up into a ball and giving up over.

His stomach cramped, feeling like it was turning in on itself and devouring its own flesh. He was thirsty too, he realized. He swallowed, trying to work some moisture into his throat. Hungry, thirsty, tired. He _hurt_ everywhere.

Rodney would never forgive him. If John knew the scientist at all, he was probably screaming at everyone, working on no sleep and lots of caffeine as he searched for him. He smiled suddenly, picturing the prickly scientist in his lab, waving his arms around and causing everyone around him to jump and scramble. It was miracle he managed to keep anyone employed in his lab for any length of time.

His dying would disappoint Ronon and piss off McKay, but it would hurt Teyla. Honestly, it would hurt all of them—he hoped anyway, because they did seem to like having him around most of the time—but Teyla was different. He’d felt a bond with Teyla since the first day they’d met, a friendship that he knew instinctively would run deeper than any other friendship he’d ever had if only he didn’t get in its way.

He pushed against the ground, his arms shaking at the effort, and used his shirt to wipe the dirt and moisture off his face. He winced as his fingers brushed the gash on the top of his head, and the events of the last day—few days?—clicked into perspective. The attack that had flipped the truck had knocked him out cold for who knew how long. Bench Presser’s rough treatment hadn’t done him any good either, and then there was the trip down the river and into the cave system. That had knocked him out as well for another indeterminate period of time.

The accumulated injuries were taking their toll, and they’d take his life if he continued on his current path. The head injury alone was enough to shatter rational thought, but add hunger and fear…

He shook his head. Survival began and ended in the mind, and it would begin now for him. The lake cavern was dark now that the crystal was gone— _broken,_ he amended. A soft glow behind him was just barely visible from the tunnel leading back to the pool room. He closed his eyes, pushing out all other thoughts.

First rule of survival: decide to live. Second rule: take care of basic necessities. He had plenty of drinking water. He had heat—not fire, but at least he wouldn’t freeze to death. He could turn the smaller tent room into a secure shelter if he needed to, blocking the tunnel entrances when he slept to keep out any big creatures, like the saber-toothed turtle. He thought of the crawfish in the lake—food.

What he didn’t have was fire to cook the food. If all else failed, he could eat the things raw, and he was close to that point now. Pain pulsed in his stomach, but he pushed it back.

 _Not yet. Think. Clear the mind._

What did he need for fire? Tinder, kindling, fuel. Oxygen and heat. There was moss and algae on the rocks but it was wet. He stood, swaying for a moment in the darkness. When his sense of balance settled, he stumbled back toward the pool room and grabbed another crystal. He walked around the room, then back down the tunnel, seeing his environment more clearly.

The rocks farther away from the lake also had algae and moss, but it had dried out. It could work as tinder, enough of it maybe as kindling. He began scraping it from the stones and soon had a large handful of it.

Fuel. Even if he could start a fire, it wouldn’t last long without fuel. He returned to the lakeside and set his pile of tinder down. He raised the crystal and scanned the area. Near the rock wall where he’d broken the last crystal, he saw roots snaking along the cracks in the stone. Most of them were small, but a few would make decent sized logs. He climbed over the rocks to them, spotting glowing broken shards from his other crystal.

He set his crystal down and pulled out his knife, prepared to saw through the first large root with the small blade, and almost fell over backward when the root snapped easily away from the stone. He grabbed at another one, and it too broke off with little effort.

“Finally,” he said, feeling a welling of hope.

He broke the larger roots into logs and snapped off smaller pieces as kindling. Tinder, kindling, fuel. Now all he needed was heat. Something to spark the tinder into a flame.

Spark. The crystal. He snapped his head back toward broken shards still glowing faintly. He saw them again in his mind as they’d shattered, a hundred electrical sparks flashing at once across the rocky wall. His own, private, miniature lightning storm.

He grabbed the largest broken pieces he could find and brought it back to the flat area next to the lake. He would make the fire here. Making sure the kindling and fuel were in reach, he grabbed half of the tinder, then placed the broken crystal in the center. He just needed one spark to catch the dry moss. Grabbing one of the rocks from his crawfish pen, he held it over the crystal and took a deep breath.

He smashed the rock down against the crystal with as much force as he could muster. The crystal shattered again, the smaller pieces flying away from the center of impact and glowing faintly. Close up, he realized that the sparks he’d seen before had been an illusion. It hadn’t been sparks—just smaller crystals flaring as they were ripped apart. A crushing weight began to descend on him as he fingered the tinder. There was a bit of residual heat in the crystal shards, but not enough to start a fire and no heat whatsoever in the dried moss.

No heat. No fire. His hands were shaking again, and he pressed them into the ground next to him.

“The crystals were a dead end,” he mumbled. “Still have everything I need for a fire though. Still have light. And a knife. Options—think of your options, John.”

He picked up the knife and twisted it around. The blade glinted in the soft blue light of the whole crystal. Flint and steel. He had no idea what the rocks around him were made of, but if he struck the knife blade against them with enough force, he might get a spark that way.

A thought niggled at the back of his brain. A memory. He glanced at the knife again, then the flat area next to the lake with his piles of root logs. Water lapped next to him. He closed his eyes, reaching for the memory and sensing that it was important, but it sank away from him. When he opened his eyes, he turned his head to stare out across the dark water. His eyes fastened on the spots of crystals growing in sporadic clumps throughout the cavern.

He turned back to the crystal next to him and held it up. Crystal. Quartz. The memory rose again, an old one. High school. Ninth grade physical science. Quartz, like flint, was a hard stone, that when struck against another one containing iron, such as pyrite or marcasite, would produce a spark. He swallowed, feeling adrenaline pump through him. The crystals weren’t exactly normal quartz crystals, but if they were close enough…

“Maybe,” he whispered. “Maybe…”

He broke off the end of the crystal so that he had a piece small enough to fit in his hand, then picked up a wad of the dried moss and held the crystal over it. He grabbed the knife next and turned the blade out so that the dull side would strike the crystal. The spark would fly down into the tinder, the tinder would start to burn, turning to a flame. He dropped his arm and struck the knife against the quartz. Both his arms vibrated from the impact but he raised his knife hand for a second try.

He lost count how many times he struck the crystal. Enough times that sweat had broken out across his forehead and dripped down his neck. His shirt was damp from the effort, but still he worked at it. He blinked the moisture out of his eyes, focusing on the task at hand.

 _One more hit, just one more hit,_ he repeated to himself.

His shoulders and arms were growing heavy with fatigue when he saw a small orange spark jump from the crystal and knife to the moss beneath. He froze, seeing a wisp of smoke. His breath huffed out of him, a reflex he hadn’t intended, but the extra air ignited more of the tinder.

He grabbed the kindling and pressed it to the smoking pile in his hand. He blew as gently as he could, and almost cried when the first flame burst up around the small root twigs. He dropped the pile onto the ground and began carefully adding larger and larger twigs. The flames leapt and curled into the darkness, and he started laughing, quietly at first, then almost hysterically.

Fire. He had fire. He crawled over to the lakeside where he’d left his bootlace and pulled out another thread. With what little coordination he had left, he tied more of the wet moss to one end of the thread, dabbing it with the blood drying on his elbow, then tossing the bait into the water. He got a bite immediately, and he wondered if it was the same crawfish he’d caught before.

“Come to daddy,” he crowed, whipping the fishing line out of the water and snagging the small crawfish at the end in triumph.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Part 2

He was in heaven. Honest to God heaven.

He flipped onto his back, floating in the bathtub hot waters of the glowing pool. His stomach was not exactly full, but he’d caught and eaten eight crawfish after roasting them on a spit over his small but effective fire. He gone back to the river afterward, drank as much water as he could handle, then curled up under the crystal in the small tent room for a nap. He had no idea how long he’d slept, but he’d woken up feeling better than he had since first falling into this place.

He’d returned to the river again, drinking as much as he could, before returning to the pool room and stripping off his clothes. He felt grimy—he was grimy—and the hot water was doing wonders both for his general body odor and his stiff, sore muscles. He should probably make some attempt at cleaning his clothes, but for now, he was going to just float.

A grunt off to the side jerked him out of his reverie, and he flailed his arms, kicking his feet in the water to swing his body around. The saber-toothed turtle was back, sniffing and grunting the air but staying close to the tunnel that led to the giant hot crystals. John watched it take a few tentative steps forward. His clothes were on the rocks a few feet away, his knife in the side pocket of his pants. The animal would make a good meal, but John shook his head, remembering his last attempt at catching the thing.

Under the glowing crystals, he could see the animal’s tough skin. It must have a weakness somewhere, but the effort it could take to figure out what that weakness was might not be worth it. After he killed it, he’d have to cut it up to get to the meat, and he wasn’t sure his little knife could handle that.

“And there’s those teeth,” he said.

The animal snapped its head in John’s direction and froze. John went as still as possible, barely flutter kicking under the water to keep his head above the surface. A second passed, then another. Finally, the animal sniffed the air and turned away, dawdling forward along the edge of the pool room.

 _So that’s how it’s going to be,_ he thought. _You mind your business, I’ll mind mine._ John could live with that. The creature disappeared into the tunnel heading toward the river, and John relaxed. He kicked his legs until he was floating on his back again.

“Heaven,” he whispered, but now other thoughts were beginning to intrude. He had plenty of water, but food would be an issue again before long. And then what? He sighed, his sense of peace evaporating. The hardest question in survival was deciding when to stay put and when to take a chance and leave. He fingered his chin, feeling the rough growth on his jaw. He’d been down here for a couple of days, at least. How long should he stay and wait for rescue? Would they be able to read his sub-q transmitter underground?

He glanced down at himself, grimacing at the sight. His chest, arms, and legs were covered with bruises, the deep blues and purples turning yellow at the edges. No wonder he’d felt like hell. He could only imagine what his back, neck, and face must look like. It was a miracle he wasn’t more seriously injured. His head had not stopped hurting since he’d first woken up in the truck, but the pain had faded enough that he could ignore it. Or he’d just gotten used to it.

He kicked himself over to the side and climbed out of the water. He dunked his clothes into the pool and began scrubbing them against a rock. He’d left his fishing lines in the lake, hoping to catch more crawfish. Assuming they were still biting, he could eat again, but then he needed to explore—assess his situation. If he could backtrack up the river and find the spot where he fell in, maybe he could climb back out.

He nodded, settling on the plan and kicking himself for not thinking about this earlier. He wrung his clothes out and held them up to his face, breathing in deep. They smelled like water—much better than the sweaty BO stench of before. He scratched his jaw again, wishing he had a mirror of some kind. He’d love nothing more than to shave the scruff off his face, but that was the least of his priorities.

He draped his clothes over the nearest large crystal, hoping the heat would make them dry faster, then walked over to the black lake. He felt a little self-conscious walking through these tunnels buck naked, but he brushed it off. He was alone—if someone else was down here with him, they would have shown themselves already. The fire pit was still smoldering, but he was almost out of dried root logs. By the time he’d collected the remaining roots clinging to the walls in that immediate area, he was sweating again.

“Figures,” he grumbled. He threw smaller twigs onto the coals and was relieved when they started to smolder. Within minutes, he had another fire going but no more firewood. He’d also caught four more crawfish. He pulled up the other six lines he’d left in the water and groaned when he found them empty. With a sigh, he tied more moss to the ends and tossed them back into the water.

Four was better than nothing, though. He ate quickly, the smell of the roasting fish making his stomach grumble. He sucked down every last drop of juice and had to force himself to toss the shells to the side and not eat those too. His clothes were mostly dry by the time he was done, and he slid back into them in relief, comforted by the feel of cloth next to his skin.

Equipped with his knife and a handful of crystals, he set out toward the river. He half expected to run into his saber-toothed turtle friend, but it had disappeared. The cooler air of the river tunnel was almost refreshing, and he breathed deep. He knelt next to the water and scooped a couple of handfuls into his mouth before heading upstream.

The river had slowed noticeably, and John surmised that the storm overhead had stopped. He was reassured by that—no storms meant nothing to keep his team from looking from him. Depending on where he fell in, it might also mean an easier time of climbing out to the surface. The larger crystal gave him just enough light to pick his way along the rocky path next to the river. It was clear that the river level varied greatly and he realized he was lucky to have a path at all. It was all too possible that the path he was currently on became submerged when the river—fed by storms above—rose.

He glanced at his watch and frowned at the smashed face. The inability to measure the passage of time was getting under his skin. He guessed that almost an hour had passed since he’d started up the river bank. He scanned the path he was on upstream and down, searching for some sign of where he may have fallen in. The rock ceiling was rough and uneven, but he had yet to see any holes.

He plowed forward. His time to explore the river was limited by how long the crystal would hold its light. He’d picked a larger one, thinking that it would last longer and maximize the amount of time he had to explore and yet not be so heavy that it slowed him down. As he climbed over the next wall of rocks blocking his path, he heard the sound of splashing. It was different from the river washing up against the rocks. It was like a steady stream was being poured into water from high above.

His heart thudded in his chest. Had he found the way out? He clambered over the rocks, his boots slipping on his feet. He’d had to cut his one remaining bootlace into two pieces to replace the one he’d picked apart for fishing lines. He waved the crystal in front of him, scanning the ceiling.

 _There._ Hanging over the center of the river, he spotted water flowing from a hole in the ceiling. Vines flapped in the steady stream of water about as thick as his arm, washed down from the forest above. He inched his way over the wet boulders beneath the hole, wary of slipping and falling in. That was the last thing his battered body needed.

“Damn it,” he cursed. His voice echoed down the river tunnel. The crack in the ceiling was at least ten feet out of reach.

By leaning precariously over the river, he stretched his arm out for the vines. That was his only hope of reaching the ceiling. Even as thoughts of climbing up the slick vegetation crossed his mind, his hand wrapped around one end and he pulled down. All of the vines fell away from the crack and into the water.

“Shit!” John cried out, flailing his arms as he tried to regain his balance. So much for that plan. He crouched down, breathing hard. He’d managed not to drop the crystal, but the vines were being dragged down river.

He jumped off the rocks and back to the path. He could use those vines. In his brief close-up view of them, he’d seen little dark berries growing in clumps among the leaves. He jogged back down the path, searching for the vegetation, and pumped his fist in the air when he found all of them caught on a rock jutting out into the water.

The vines were a tangled mess. He pulled the entire pile out of the water and set them on the rocks, peeling back the leaves to find the berries. There were a lot of them—enough to feed him for a couple of days at least.

He bit his lip. _Were they safe?_

“Black, blue, good for you. White, red, better off dead,” he chanted under his breath, remembering the rhyme from a class long ago. White or red berries were more likely to be poisonous, while black or blue ones were more likely to be edible. But that was on Earth, and not all black or blue berries were safe to eat. Ideally, he would watch the local fauna and see if they ate it, but his saber-toothed turtle friend was inconveniently missing.

There was only one way to find out. He picked off a single berry and popped into his mouth. It was juicy, the flavor bursting in his mouth—tart at first, then turning sweet. He picked another berry off and ate it. It was good—really good. Not like any fruit he’d had before to even draw a comparison. He ate one last berry then forced himself to stop. Three was enough—more than enough—to test its edibility. He untangled the rest of the vines then wrapped them in a loose bunch, like a rope, swinging the pile over his shoulder. The crystal in his hand was fading noticeably and he cursed himself for not picking a larger one.

“It was a dead end anyway,” he said out loud. Given his current lack of resources, he had little chance of climbing out of the tunnels the same way he’d entered. He’d have to find another way, or wait for rescue.

He was halfway back when the first cramp ripped through his gut, causing him to stagger. The crystal slipped from his grasp, cracking in half on a rock as it hit the ground. John stopped, leaning forward and pressing an arm to his gut. He took a deep breath, hoping the cramp was just a fluke. When nothing else happened, he grabbed the larger half of the broken crystal and slowly straightened up, intent on reaching his glowing pool room.

Four steps later, another cramp hit, this one worse than the last. He groaned, doubling over. The crystal slipped from his grasp again, and the vines on his shoulders slid to the ground with a wet smack. Another cramp twisted through his stomach and he dropped to his knees with a cry.

He was heaving within seconds, his gut expelling everything he had eaten in the last day. He tasted the sweet berries again, and that only caused him to gag more. Sounds faded around him, and even the crystal light seemed to dim, as he was wracked with nausea and stomach pain. When he was choking on nothing more than bile, he crawled over to the river and scooped up a sip of water with a shaking hand. He didn’t dare swallow it. He swished it around in his mouth and spit it out, washing away the sour tang of vomit and the sweet tartness of the berries.

 _Damn those berries,_ he thought. He shouldn’t have eaten three of them. He should have had one and waited to see how he reacted. A cold chill slithered across his skin, and he shivered despite the beads of sweat dripping from his face. Home—he had to get home—and he almost laughed when he realized that by home he meant the room with the glowing pool.

He pushed himself up onto shaky legs, grabbed the crystal and bundle of vines, and staggered back over the rocky path. He tripped twice, but now his head had started to pound in time with his twisting, cramping stomach, and the newly acquired bruises were hardly a blip on his waning awareness.

Until he tripped and landed on his stomach, and he found himself heaving again. There was nothing left in his gut and still his body tried to force out everything it had ever ingested. At this rate, he wouldn’t even have internal organs left. He writhed against the cold stone, closing his eyes against the pain. Sweat or tears were covering his face, and it was an effort just to pull in a breath in between the dry heaves.

“Shoot…me,” he choked out. He had survived against all odds in this underground maze of tunnels and darkness only to be taken out by a piece of fruit. He pressed his forehead into the rock, waiting for oblivion.

oooooooooooooooooooo

He woke up to darkness, and for one, heart-stopping moment, he wondered if the glowing crystals had been nothing more than a dream. He clawed at his face, as if he could move the black pitch pressing against his vision. Off to the side, just like before, he could hear the river lapping against the rocks.

He lifted his head, then immediately dropped it with a groan. The muscles around his stomach and ribs were stiff and sore, and his stomach was still flipping dangerously, threatening to throw him into dry heaves again. The river sounded louder, and he wondered if it had rained while he’d been out.

Or maybe it was just the darkness. Everything sounded louder in the dark. He lifted his head again, closing his eyes against a wave of dizziness. Not that that helped. It was black, whether his eyes were open or not. He crawled over to the river, moving as gently as his stomach would allow and dipped his hand into the water. It was cold, and he shivered, but he managed a few sips of water before his stomach clenched in rebellion.

“Not…not happening,” he begged. He pushed away from the water and lay down, wrapping his arms around his body. He needed to get back to the crystal rooms, where it was warm.

He gave the water a few minutes to settle, and when it didn’t immediately make a reappearance, he crawled to the far side of the path. The rocky tunnel wall would hopefully stop him from stumbling into the river or from walking too far and missing the tunnel back to the glowing pool. He thought of the plant with its poisonous blue berries and sighed. He couldn’t eat the fruit but he could still use the vines, wherever they were.

“Later,” he mumbled. He could come back for them later. He grabbed the wall and stumbled forward.

The blackness was stifling, and the rocks along the path seemed to jump up and grab at his feet and ankles. His headache morphed as he walked, filling his head and stretching down into his neck and chest. He tripped too many times to count, but the throbbing in his head pushed out all other pain. His mouth and throat felt raw, eliciting a series of endless dry coughs and amplifying the pain in his head. He felt as bad, if not worse, than he had at any other time down here.

He fell when the rock beneath his guiding hand suddenly disappeared, and he landed hard, face first on the rocky ground. He gagged at the flare of pain that erupted all over his body, and saw a flash of white in the darkness. He spit up the little bit of water he’d swallowed, then lay immobile on the cold stone.

 _Get up, John,_ a voice screamed at him. _Get warm._

He had to move. He knew in the small, rational part of his brain that could still be heard over the agony that moving was critical. He willed his arms to push himself upright, but nothing happened. It was as if his body and mind had disconnected, and no amount of mental screaming was going to result in any physical movement whatsoever.

 _You’re going to do die here, Sheppard,_ said Ronon.

John gasped, jerking his head up and seeing spots of white dance across his vision. “Ronon?”

 _You really think I won’t exhaust every possible means of finding you?_ Rodney asked. John swallowed, stifling a sob. The pain was overwhelming. For a brief moment, he thought he felt a hand on the small of his back, and then Teyla’s voice.

 _Please, John—don’t give up._

He rolled, searching the darkness for his team. Their voices were too loud, too clear. They had to be here.

“Guys?” he called out, and he could hear the shaky weakness in his voice.

 _Warm. Have to get warm,_ the voice in his head begged, sounding as weak as he felt.

He’d fallen near the rock wall, halfway into the tunnel, and he used the rocks to pull himself up to his knees. He’d done this once before; he could do it again. He crawled forward, wavering with every forward step as dizziness swamped over him. He wanted to throw up again, but he swallowed against the urge in desperation.

It was easier crawling through the darkness this time. He knew there was light and warmth ahead of him, and the thought of it spurred him on. When he reached the tent room with its single crystal, he ignored it and pushed on. The glowing pool room was warmer—much warmer. Minutes stretched into hours as his whole world became the narrow tunnel, step after crawling step. When the warmth and humidity of the glowing pool room finally reached him, his vision was swimming in and out of focus. He collapsed next to the water, shivering as the heat of the small cavern wrapped itself around him.

oooooooooooooooooooo

The crystal light was heavy in his hand, and it was an effort to hold it up in front of him. The path along the lakeside was narrower than the one along the river and filled with rocks and boulders, making walking treacherous even on a good day.

And today was not a good day. John had slept for hours as far as he could tell, woken up dehydrated and sick and wishing he hadn’t crawled so far away from the river. He crawled to the lake this time, fighting back the almost continuous sensation of falling into a dark hole, and drank his fill of lake water. It was risky, but he wasn’t sure he had the strength to make it all the way to the river.

He’d slept again next to the lake, and the next time he woke up, he stomach was twisting in on itself in hunger. His fishing lines had caught two small crawfish—or at least there were only two left on the lines. The fire had also gone out, but he had no more roots to burn anyway. He ate the crawfish raw, hardly tasting them, then filled his stomach with more water.

The river had been a bust, so after his too-small meal, he’d set out along the lakeside. He stumbled, catching himself on a rock. He paused, wiping his brow with his arm. He was covered in dirt again. He dropped the arm holding the crystal and sighed. If he didn’t find something along the lake, he was beginning to fear that he was royally screwed. He glanced around, focusing on the small islands of glowing crystals growing sporadically in the lake. The lake disappeared into the darkness, and he wondered how large the area was. The ceiling of the cavern was high above him—in this area anyway—visible only because of more clumps of glowing crystals.

He pushed on, knowing his energy was limited. It was slightly warmer here than along the river, but still he shivered. The crystal in his hand began to fade, and he knew he’d have to turn back soon if he didn’t want to walk back in the dark, but he ignored it and kept going, recklessly. He had to find something—either a way out or a way to live a little bit longer.

The light of the crystal finally faded so much that John tossed it into the water. Then blinked. He could still see the surface of the water and the rocks in front of him. He looked around for the source of the light, but the crystals above him were too far away to do him much good. He picked his way forward carefully, sidestepping slippery boulders. The path along the lake curved out of sight ahead of him, but he could hear splashing water now, and the lake definitely seemed brighter.

As he climbed round a larger boulder jutting out into the water, he stopped in amazement. Ahead of him, he saw crystals growing out of the walls and illuminating the entire area. In the middle of them, there was wide cave, through which water flowed steadily into the lake. The river? It was the only explanation he could think of. Around the edges, where the river current swirled into the black water, tall pale stalks grew in thick clumps. Hundreds of them, fed by the light of the crystals all around them.

It was like stepping into a different world. John stumbled forward, going for the river first, and drank greedily. He washed his face as best he could, running fingers through his matted hair and thick beard, then studied the greens stalks.

They looked like cattail, and even had the brown corn-cob end. It was a plant he knew was edible on Earth, but he wondered if he dared taste test them. His stomach growled loudly. The crawfish were growing more and more sparse, and this was the first indication of living plant life he’d found down here. If it was edible, it would provide days of food. If it wasn’t, he wasn’t sure he could survive another bout of food poisoning. Then again, if he didn’t find another food source, he wasn’t likely to survive much longer anyway. He’d pushed the shaky, wavering feeling of crashing blood sugar to the back of his mind, but the amount of effort it was taking to survive down here would drain him of all reserves too soon.

He drank more water, then dug up the nearest plant stalk. The roots of Earth’s cattails could be eaten raw or cooked. He peeled back the outer layer of leaves to find a thick white stalk underneath, then rinsed it off, delaying the inevitable. He had to test it, but he would not make the same mistake as last time. He took one small bite and set the whole thing to the side, then sat down with this back against the warm crystals to wait.

He dozed off, waking with a jerk and wondering how long he’d fallen asleep. It could have been minutes or hours. Everything looked the same, but his head felt heavy and disjointed, pain pounding in his temples, and it took a monumental effort to fight through the lethargy to crawl to the river and drink more water.

He scooted back to his warm spot against the crystals and waited. His stomach felt fine—he was painfully hungry, but the cattail-like plant didn’t seem to be having an adverse effect. His mouth began to salivate, but he held off, wanting to be absolutely certain.

When he could resist no longer, he ate the rest of the root stalk then forced himself to stop. The few bites had hardly but a dent in his hunger, but he figured he’d eaten more than enough to make himself sick—if it was going to make him sick at all. He drank more water, then crawled away from the area to relieve himself. When he was back sitting against the crystals, he passed the time by staring at the crystals growing in little islands across the lake.

There were a half a dozen of them within sight, but the one on the far right caught his eye. The light looked different. He blinked and strained his focus. He could pick out rocks among the crystals and more cattail growing near the edges. The crystals grew high above the water—higher than any of the other little islands around it.

He stood up, stepping into the water to get a better look. The rocks and crystal grew up to the ceiling, and the ceiling seemed to dip down toward it. The height was maybe twenty feet or so from what he could tell. It was the quality of the light, however, that suddenly set his heart thumping in his chest. The crystals on the bottom cast a warm, yellowish blue light on the rocks and water, but the light near the top was paler and flickering, its source hidden by a hole in the ceiling. There were also no crystals nearby either, so he shouldn’t have been able to see the top as clearly as he was. Either there were crystals up farther in the hole, or he was seeing natural light.

 _Natural light._ Was it a way out? His hands began to shake, and it had nothing to do with the hunger twisting through his gut. The rocky island was more like a stalagmite of stone, jutting up out of the water and riddled with crystals. At full strength, John could have climbed it easily.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. He was far from full strength. It wasn’t exactly close to the lakeside either. Swimming out there in his current condition would likely exhaust him, and he wasn’t even sure he’d make it that far. He stumbled back to the shore and sat down, rubbing his stomach. It had yet to reject the cattail root—hadn’t given a single indication that it was bad for him.

Survival was about making the best choice in a bad situation. John knew this intellectually, but it was hard to translate that into practice. Was eating more of the plant and staving off hunger the best choice? Had he waited long enough? He pulled a dozen more of the stalks out and peeled back the leaves to reveal the white, juicy roots.

“Oh, God,” he groaned. His insides were eating themselves, and the sight of potential food was overriding any rational thoughts. He felt himself giving into the hunger only a split second before he grabbed the first root and inhaled it.

He ate the other eleven in quick succession, then dug up a dozen more and inhaled those. By the time he was done, his stomach felt full for the first time since his ordeal had begun, and he smiled in satisfaction. He may become fatally sick later, but at the moment, he couldn’t care less. He drank some water, washing down the last bite of root, then slid back against the crystals. He was asleep before he’d finished curling up against the warm rock.

When he woke up, he was hungry again, and he devoured more of the plant, feeling almost hysterically giddy. He ate until he was full and rubbed his stomach in pleasure. Never again would he take food for granted. He laughed at the thought, knowing he would. He’d been in similar situations before and thought the exact same thing, but eventually, he got used to having food and drink and shelter and warmth whenever he needed it, with very little effort on his part.

The river was flowing steadily into the lake, but it wasn’t deep. He crossed it easily and walked around the lighted area on the other side. Under the crystals growing up the rock walls, the cattail plants grew in abundance. He climbed over a boulder to see how far the plant growth extended along the shoreline and whooped for joy.

The storm and river had washed down branches and logs from above, and John found a pile of them caught in a small eddy behind a group of boulders. Most of the branches were about the thickness of his arm or smaller, perfect for burning in a fire, but the river had also caught a broken tree trunk, and it bobbed in the water next to the rocks. There wasn’t nearly enough wood for a raft, even if he didn’t use any of it for a fire, but the log was just wide enough that he might be able to straddle it and use it as flotation device. It was heavier than hell, but he dragged half of it up out of the water and braced it against the rocks to that it wouldn’t float away on him.

He pulled the rest of the branches out after that, excitement thrumming through him. He had a plentiful supply of food now, firewood that would last for days, and a possible way out if he chose to make the trip across the lake. And he wouldn’t drown in the process. He was grinning like an idiot, and sweating from the effort of moving the branches to dry land, but he didn’t care.

He grabbed an armload of branches and made the slow trip back to the firepit. He probably could have made camp right there next to the river and lake, but he was loathe to give up the glowing pool room. Even the thought of it wrapped him with a sense of security. With his arms full of logs—and a new crystal for light—he had to pick his way carefully over the rocks. He returned almost immediately, moving quickly, and ate another dinner of cattail roots and river water. When he was satiated, he picked as many roots as he could carry and returned to his camp, bouncing with renewed energy.

oooooooooooooooooooo

John floated in the hot water of the glowing pool, weighing his options. He had plenty of food now, so waiting was an option, but how long was he supposed to do that? He had no sense of night or day, but based on the thickness of his beard, he guessed he’d been down in the cave system for at least five days, maybe six.

That should have been plenty of time for his team to realize he was missing. The details surrounding the attack on the truck convoy were vague, but the others would have gotten suspicious within a few hours of not being able to reach him. They would have gone looking and found the demolished truck, maybe even his radio or vest. If something had happened to them that might have prevented them from looking, their required check-in with Atlantis had long since past. Atlantis would be looking—should be looking.

Unless something had happened on their end too, preventing them from gating in. The stargate itself had been set back in a shallow cave, so it was conceivable that a landslide or rock fall had covered the gate enough to prevent any wormholes. Or the locals had covered it themselves

But the entire area around the gate had been wild and unused, and they’d been eager to get to know his team and talk about trade possibilities.

He sighed, splashing water onto his face and rubbing the skin with both hands. The thoughts swirled endless in his head, and each time they came around to the forefront of his mind, his situation became more muddled. There were too many variables, too many things that could happen.

“Keep it simple, John,” he said out loud to the ceiling. The crystals glittered above him.

He had been missing for too long, and he was confident that no one would leave him behind without making at least a serious effort at finding him. If he’d fallen into these tunnels half conscious, then someone wide awake, coherent, and uninjured should also be able to find them.

“Either my team or Atlantis is up there—maybe both.”

His voice echoed in the small cavern and he kicked his leg as he floated toward the edge, pushing himself back to the center of the pool.

“If they haven’t found me, then something is stopping them from looking.”

It seemed reasonable, but what would stop them—any of them—from looking? He flashed to his time in Afghanistan, and the days he’d spent wandering the desert with Holland. No one had liked him there, and they had still come looking for him.

“They’ll come,” he snapped, a flash of irritation overwhelming the memory. He shook his head, and let the water soak through his hair and lap at his face. It was helping the headache, a little.

“Either they can’t look for me because they’ve been attacked and captured as well…”

He shook his head. That didn’t make sense. Yes, his team could be captured or, God forbid, hurt or killed, but that didn’t explain the lack of search teams from Atlantis. For there to be no search teams from Atlantis, something had to have happened in the city stopping them from coming or something had happened to the gate here. That was a lot of events that had to take place to stop them from looking for him.

“Too many,” he muttered. The more things that had to take place to stop them from gating to the planet, the more unlikely it was. Even if the locals above were fighting, Atlantis had puddle jumpers that could scan hundreds of miles undetected.

 _Wraith attack._ The idea flashed through his mind and his heart seized. He froze and didn’t start kicking until his head dipped underwater. He came up sputtering and swam over to the edge.

“God, that’s morbid. What the hell is wrong with me?” Images flashed through his mind of the world above him burning, Wraith stalking the survivors and sucking the life out of them, all while he lounged in relative safety in the biggest damn bathtub in the galaxy.

Not Wraith—there were no Wraith. If there were, these underground tunnels would be a natural refuge, and no locals had come screaming past him. He pushed himself out of the pool and squeezed the water out of his hair. He glanced down at himself, scowling at the bruises that still covered his body from head to toe. Shouldn’t they be fading by now? He scratched his chin and wished again for a razor, then pulled his clothes over his damp body, half-hoping for and half-resisting the idea of running natives piling into his cavern and finding him walking around naked and talking to himself.

If Rodney were here, he would go straight to the science. John nodded. The idea that something in the rocks or tunnels—maybe the crystals?—was blocking his sub-q transmitter was the simplest explanation. And that meant that getting out of the tunnels was the best option for rescue. They had to find him to rescue him, and a blocked sub-q transmitter would put a damper on things.

His stomach growled, and he pressed a hand against his gut. Hungry again. If he was going to attempt to climb out through the hole in the ceiling above the lake, he would need as much energy as he could get. Starting off the journey with a full stomach seemed like a smart idea. He made his way quickly over to the lake where he’d left the stalks of cattail roots and firewood and set to work on building a fire again. It took almost no time to catch a spark of his knife and crystal, and only a few minutes later, he had a roaring fire going. He peeled one of the stalks and began munching, staring at the flames.

He snapped his head toward the black lake at the sound of a small splash. About fifteen feet out, he saw concentric circles rippling outward. A crawfish? It would have had to have been a pretty big crawfish to make that kind of splash.

“Lobster,” he whispered, and he smiled at the thought, his mouth watering.

He was staring at the water when he saw a flash of movement again, dark gray against black. He closed his eyes, replaying the image in his head. A thin flap had come out of the water, then smacked against the surface and disappeared.

A fish. Or something alive—something bigger than the crawfish and probably edible. He grabbed another cattail and chewed on the root, contemplating the dark water. He had branches now, and the smaller crystals would make a good spear point. He nodded, finishing off his cattail root with two bites then turned to his pile of firewood.

Finding a suitable stick was simple enough. He ended up stripping out of his clothes and diving into the hot-tub pool to find three crystals small yet sharp enough to work as his spear. Slipping back into his clothes, he traipsed back to the lake and pulled out half of his fishing lines. The crawfish had stopped biting, and the lines were empty. He arranged the crystals around the end of the stick, forming a three-forked prong, then tied them on tightly to the stick. The added advantage to using the crystals was the light they emitted. In the dark water, he should be able to see the fish.

He grabbed a large crystal for extra light, then tightened the laces on his boots. He’d almost kicked them off, but the thought of treading into the dark water with bare feet was unappealing and unsafe enough that he decided it would be better to worry about drying out his boots later. He hadn’t really ventured into the lake before now, and he felt a small fluttering of nervous energy in his stomach.

“Get a grip, John,” he said. “Think of the lobsters.”

He edged out into the dark water, feeling his way carefully with every step. He kept the head of the spear in the water, and it cast just enough light for him to see about a foot-wide circle underneath the surface.

Ten feet out he caught his first glimpse of the creature he guessed had splashed the surface earlier. It was more of a stingray than a lobster, about the size of a Frisbee. He stopped as soon as it moved and watched it dart away from the light. Like the crawfish, the light was an effective deterrent, chasing the creatures away before John had a chance to stab at them.

He lifted the spear, leaving the area in front of him dark. It was risky, but he stood no chance of catching anything with the light in the water. Instead, he held the larger crystal out in front of him and strained his eyes for any movement. He dragged his feet along the rocky bottom, wary of twisting an ankle or falling head first into the water.

He saw another stingray-like creature hovering in front of him and he stabbed at it, grunting with the effort. He thought he might have nicked it, but the creature jerked away from him, twisting and splashing in the water before disappearing into blackness. His spear jarred in his hand as the spear points hit the rock floor.

“That’s okay, that’s okay,” he muttered. He hefted it out and examined the end. The crystals were still firmly attached to the stick.

He took a few more steps out, moving as slowly as he could. A glance back at the fire told him he was about thirty feet out at this point. The water was up to mid-thigh but wasn’t getting too deep too quickly. He heard a splash from somewhere nearby but he missed the creature.

On the next step, the sharp pain of a dozen needles jabbing into this flesh suddenly screamed through his foot and ankle. With a shout, he stumbled backward, lost his footing, and fell into the water. The spear and large crystal dropped from his grasp and he reached instinctively for his ankle. For a split second, the pain was stamped out and John felt nothing, but then the agony moved in as flames burned up his leg under the skin.

He stood up on his good leg, but then that one buckled. The throbbing was getting worse at an exponential rate. His stomach curled in nausea in response, and he felt suddenly lightheaded.

 _Pass out. I’m going to pass out._

He sucked in a deep breath. He could not pass out—not here. Not thirty feet from the shore. He forced his good leg underneath him and pushed against the ground, half-walking and half-floating back to the shore.

At fifteen feet from the shore, the water was too shallow for him to continue moving that way, forcing him to stand up. Pain washed up from his foot in crashing waves, and he was shaking, feeling ice-cold.

“Shock,” he whispered. “Come…on…”

He stumbled forward. His injured leg felt heavy and bulkier than normal as he dragged it through the water. With only five feet left to go, he dropped to his knees and began to crawl. His foot caught against the rocky floor, and a hundred knives seemed to push deeper into the flesh. He screamed, his arms giving out and sending him face first into the water.

He came up a second later, choking. Less than a foot of water lay between him and the shore. He pushed forward, fighting the darkness swimming around him. When he finally collapsed on the shore, he was a shivering, writhing mess, tears of pain streaming down his face. Whatever had bit him was a hundred times more painful than the Iratus bug. He rolled to his side, no energy to sit up but needing to see the damage to his foot.

In the flickering light of the fire, it took a second for his eyes to adjust and realize that the shadow next to his foot was not a shadow but an animal, alive and still attached to him. Its skin was dark and glistening in the light. John sucked in a shuddering breath and pulled the knife from his pocket.

With more strength than he thought he had, he sat up and scooted closer to the fire. The creature attached to his foot looked more like a porcupine or sea urchin than a fish. It certainly wasn’t an Iratus bug. Dozens of its razor-sharp quills had pushed through his boot and pants, penetrating the skin underneath. He cried out as he drove the knife into the animal’s underside and felt warm liquid gush against his hand, but the quills were stuck. It took long, agonizing minutes to pull each one out until finally the sea urchin rolled away, dead. He stabbed it with the knife and flicked it toward the fire, wishing he could have thrown it farther.

Things got fuzzy after that. He felt his limbs go loose and his head roll on his neck. He felt the warmth of the fire on his face but couldn’t see it, and felt the pain in his foot and ankle move up his body in a slow, drowning flood until he could hardly breathe. A dim voice in the back of his head yelled at him to move, but the darkness was strong and inviting and he surrendered to it easily.

oooooooooooooooooooo

When John woke up, the fire was dead. Even the coals had burned out, and the residual heat in the surrounding stones had long since evaporated. He was shaking but he didn’t feel cold. In fact, he felt hot and sweaty. He pulled at the neck of his t-shirt. The air was stifling.

He lifted his head and groaned when the dim world around him tilted out of focus. Throw up. He was going to throw up. He remembered being sick before, but he hadn’t eaten any berries this time. He breathed deeply, trying to push away the nausea.

He’d almost gotten it under control when he heard a scraping sound against the stones behind him. He jerked his head up, his heart suddenly thrashing in his chest, then choked on a scream as agonizing pain flared in his foot and ankle. The only light was the glow eking in from the pool room, but it was enough to see a small, waddling rock scampering away from him. There was a flash of curving, white teeth, and then his saber-toothed turtle disappeared.

The pain took his breath away and the nausea surged. He rolled just in time, throwing up everything he’d eaten in the last day. It was as bad as when he’d eaten the berries. Long minutes passed before his stomach settled and he finally rolled away from the sour smell. He was no longer hot, but he was still sweating, and he wrapped his arms around his body to ward off the chill.

He had to get out of here. He’d decided that before but now he had to give his team a chance at finding him before he puked himself to death. Already his stomach was twisting and cramping, threatening a repeat action of a few minutes before.

Could he make it to the log, and then the island? He wasn’t even sure he could make it to his feet but he slid over to the rocky wall and pulled himself up. He’d planned on leaving a little more prepared than this, maybe take one last look at the glowing crystals and the hot pool that had probably saved his life. He had no crystals now to light his path, but with a deep breath, he grabbed the wall with both hands and took a hopping, stumbling step forward.

It almost did him in. His injured right foot scraped along the floor, sending shards of pain through the joint and muscles. His good leg buckled and marbles of white danced across his vision. He gasped, realizing he was holding his breath against the pain, then felt his stomach cramp in response.

“No,” he choked out. His head was swimming, and a fresh sheen of sweat had broken out over his body.

He willed his body back into submission and grabbed the wall again, taking another step forward. The rocks in the path were a treacherous obstacle, particularly in the dark, but his painful shuffle had him moving only inches at a time. His world narrowed to the task of using the rock wall to hold his weight and pulling himself forward.

He fell, eventually, and the effort required to stand up again was too much, but he would not die here. Whimpering moans floated over the black lake and it took him several minutes to realize the sound was coming from him. He was dragging his injured foot, jarring it against every rock and stone in the path. After a dozen feet, his knees and shins felt hashed, adding a dozen more bruises to the large collection he already had.

He ducked his head and forced his hands and knees to keep moving, inch by inch. It wasn’t until he hit flowing water that he opened his eyes and saw that he’d reached the river. He scooped up a handful of water and instantly regretted it when the cold liquid hit his already rebelling stomach. He threw it up right away and just barely managed to push away from the edge before he fell to the floor.

The glow of the crystals above was piercing, and no matter how tightly he closed his eyes, he couldn’t block the light. It was like steel blades digging through his eye sockets and into his brain. The urge to quit was overwhelming. He was sick, shaking, exhausted, and in pain, and it would be easy to just roll over and die.

“No,” he choked out. He pushed himself to the wall of crystals and forced himself to sit up. The heat felt good against his back, a counterpoint to the smoldering burn in his ankle.

He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and blinked away the sweat and tears. He needed to assess the injury now that he could see. The entire leg felt heavy and he pulled it closer to him, then tugged his pant leg up. The skin around the boot was swollen, the flesh a bluish-purple. Red streaks ran up his calf, all the way to his knee. He didn’t dare remove his boot, not sure he would be able to pull it back on again. He brushed at the dried blood around the holes in his boots but bit his lip when that sent a lance of pain shooting through his leg.

The skin was hot to the touch. There was no way he’d be able to walk on it. He looked around for something to stabilize it with, not really sure if that’s what it needed.

“Screw it,” he muttered, when nothing nearby seemed like an obvious solution.

He needed to get to the log next, and that was just a few feet away. A few small crystals were poking out of the ground near his hand and he broke them off, not sure if he might need them later. He shoved them into his pocket then dragged himself to the river. The water was cold, and it washed over his back as moved into the stream. Halfway across, the current swept his arms from under him and pushed him out into the lake, but the river’s force had slowed considerably, and it carried him almost directly to the log.

He cursed himself for pulling the log half out onto the shore, but the cool water was dousing the molten-metal pain coursing through his foot. The buoyancy helped too. He dragged the log into the water and climbed on, then let his head rest against the top. He could fall asleep.

“And die,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his face to rouse himself. He grabbed another branch, one with a forked end and stared at it. A paddle. He needed a paddle, a way to move the log and himself through the lake. Sitting up carefully, he peeled his shirt off and wrapped it around the forked end.

“There,” he said. He shivered again, his body still torn between too hot and too cold. He lay back down on the log and used his paddle to maneuver himself out into the lake.

Maneuvering the log turned out to be easy and almost painless on his ankle. The farther out he went, the colder the water became, numbing the throbbing heat of the injury. He had to fight to keep his eyes open, and almost fell into the lake once, but he made the crossing to the island of natural light quickly enough. He slid off the log, not caring if it floated away. He was at the end of his rope—either he climbed out of here and his team found him, or he died.

The small island, as it turned out, wasn’t an island at all. The rock wall of the cavern cut into the lake to a point. John dragged his body up onto a boulder and looked up the wall. There was a crack in the ceiling and jagged rocks and crystals all the way up. At the very end was a pinprick of pale blue sky.

A sob welled up in his chest, and he pressed his head against the rock wall to get his emotions under control. After all he’d been through, the exit was here with plenty of room and plenty of handholds and ledges for him to use to climb out. A child could do this. Cool air brushed against his face carrying the scent of rain and grass.

He pulled himself to his feet and reached for the first handhold.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Part 3

The air was wet and cold, and moisture clung to the grass and bushes. It was starting to rain too. The world was awash in black, but not the piercing blackness of the tunnels and caves. It was night on the surface.

John dragged himself away from the hole he’d just climbed out of, too weak to even crawl. Shudders wracked through him, an icy cold burrowing into every part of his body. The ascent up the shaft was lost in a haze of exhaustion and pain. He knew only that he’d made it, that he hadn’t given up until he’d reached the surface.

A gust of wind tore through the trees overhead, followed by a bolt of lightning. He saw the trunk of a tree ahead of him and he shifted toward it. He’d left his t-shirt wrapped around his makeshift paddle. Goosebumps danced across his skin as the skies opened up above him and cold rain pelted him. The tree would offer a little protection.

When he reached it, he curled up against the trunk and closed his eyes. He’d done everything he could. It was up to his team now.

oooooooooooooooooooo

He woke up to the sound of a bird chirping, and he cracked open his eyes to see the light of dawn spreading out over the forest. He was in a small clearing, surrounded by trees and grass. The bird was red and white, and John stared, mesmerized. The colors were dazzling.

The agony in his leg had been replaced with numbness. He couldn’t feel anything below his thigh, and he knew that was not a good thing. Grass tickled the side of his face. He needed to sit up, make a fire, get warm. The thoughts were crystal clear in his head, but they elicited no reaction from his body.

He breathed deeply, feeling a heavy weight on his chest. _Was this real?_ He thought of the glowing pool room and the saber-toothed turtle, the lake and the cattail and the little crawfish. That had been real. He had felt every second of his existence down below. This, though, this might not be real. It was too soft.

He stared at the trees, searching for the bird, but it had disappeared, snapped out of existence. Not real. The bushes wavered in and out of focus and his body pressed against grass and dirt beneath him, a hundred ton weight pinning him to the dream. He let his eyes drift closed and took another deep, shuddering breath.

“Over here!” a voice shouted.

 _Teyla,_ he thought. _I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you._

“John?”

He opened his eyes, even though he knew whatever he was going to see was an illusion. But real or not, he wanted to see her one last time. With any luck, the rest of his team would be with her.

He saw her running toward him, surrounded by mist. She disappeared for a second and he whimpered. He tried to lift his head or his hand, anything to move back into a position to see her, but nothing happened. It was raining again, a light drizzle. He could see it, and yet he felt nothing—no rain, no cold, no heat, no pain. His body was immobile and sinking into the earth, back toward the dark tunnels.

He felt a slight pressure on his arm and he forced his eyes open. They had drifted closed without him even realizing it. A scent washed over him, distinctly Teyla in nature, and it reminded him of his first meeting with the Athosians and the meal they’d been sitting at when he, Sumner, and Ford had walked into their tent.

“John?”

The voice was a ghostly whisper. He blinked back sudden moisture in his eyes and took another slow, shuddering breath.

“He is alive! Hurry!”

“My God, what happened to him?”

He felt more hands on his body, rolling him onto his back. Rodney—he had heard Rodney. A jacket was laid over his chest, blocking the drizzling rain.

“Sheppard, buddy…hey, doc, his leg.”

He felt a hand on his head, but he heard Ronon, and saw his friend squatting by his legs and staring intently back at him.

 _His team._ The mist swirled around him, obscuring Teyla’s face, but moments later, short dark hair and blue eyes peered down at him. Carson. The doctor slipped something over his head and breathing suddenly became a lot easier.

“Hang on, lad. We’ll get you home in no time.”

Home. Not the glowing pool room home. Atlantis. _Home._

Rodney’s voice called out over the clearing, dispelling some of the mist. “Major Lorne says we need to move quickly. There’s a bank of fog rolling in fast and he doesn’t want to fly the jumper blind.”

“Here they are,” Ronon called out, and John rolled his head to the side to see two Marines jogging toward him, carrying an empty stretcher. It was dropped on the ground next to him, and then a dozen hands pulled and lifted, shifting him from the soft, wet surface of the grass to the hard gurney. He groaned when the movement awakened a dull ache in his foot, and more blankets were piled on top of him.

“Let’s move, people,” Carson called out.

John closed his eyes as the world shifted with dizzying speed around him.

oooooooooooooooooooo

It was the rapid beep of his pulse coming from the heart monitor that finally convinced him he wasn’t dreaming. People moved around him, shadowy and distant. They spoke to him, he thought, but he wasn’t sure, and it was easier just to ignore them. He didn’t think he’d fallen asleep, but there were moments in between crawling out of the hole in the ground and lying in Atlantis’s infirmary that were murky and vague.

He remembered the way the puddle jumper had suddenly cut off the wind and rain, and he remembered the tingling starting at the top of his head as he’d traveled through the stargate, but the two seemed separate. Had he come through the gate in the jumper? Or had he been flown to the gate, then carried through on foot. He didn’t remember the gate room at all, but he knew he’d been lying in the infirmary for a while.

He felt a pressure in his ear and a hand on his shoulder. Where was his shirt? He blinked, remembering how he’d used it as part of his paddle. He should have put it back on.

“His temperature is up to 103 degrees.”

“Get some cooling blankets in here. And I want ice packs for his ankle—we need to get that swelling down.”

“Right away, Doctor Beckett.”

“Any word on his blood test results?”

“Nothing yet.”

The blues and greens of the walls and ceilings were bright—brilliantly bright. He twisted around, soaking in the color, and felt plastic digging uncomfortably into his face. He frowned, reaching for it, but someone intercepted him, stopping him before he’d even gotten close.

“I know that’s uncomfortable, but leave it be for now.”

The voice was soft and lilting, but worried. John flinched when his leg was lifted then set down on something cold.

“Gently now,” the voice chided. He saw white coats moving around the bed, and then a hand grabbed his forearm. Carson.

“Home?” he mumbled. He blinked as beads of sweat rolled into his eyes and began to sting.

Carson smiled. “Aye, you’re home, but you’re very sick. I need you to hang on a little longer for me.”

“Team?”

“In the waiting area. They’ll be here soon enough.”

A hand appeared from the other side of the bed, and then a cool cloth was pressed against his forehead, wiping away the moisture covering his skin.

“Cold,” he muttered, shivering.

“You’re cold?”

Carson seemed surprised, and John bit his lip, suddenly unsure. Was he cold? He thought so, but maybe he was hot. He nodded. Yes, that was it. Hot. He was hot. He pushed at the blanket pulled up to his chest.

“You’re running a high temperature,” the doctor said, pulling the blanket back up despite John’s efforts to keep it away. “The cooling blanket will help.”

John shook his head and shivered. Cold. He was cold. The blanket was cold.

“Doctor Beckett, the test results. There’s some kind of toxin…”

The hand from his arm disappeared, and moisture was covering his face again. He licked his lips and tasted salt. He let his eyes close against the stinging sweat and drifted, Carson’s voice fading as the doctor barked out orders to the half dozen people moving around him.

He was home. It was over—the tunnels, the crystals, the darkness.

 _Home._

oooooooooooooooooooo

 

The toxin worked its way through his system, leaving him feverish and weak for days. John managed to hold onto consciousness a few minutes at a time the first two days, eating a few bites of food or carrying on brief conversations with Beckett and his team. He slept for most of that time, moving only when the nurses prodded him onto one side or another.

Nighttime in the infirmary was nowhere close to dark, but he found the light over the nurses station and the flashing colors on the monitors and screens around him reassuring, even if he kept his eyes open just long enough to remember he was home, in Atlantis. On the morning of his third day back, the fever finally broke, which he celebrated with two bites of oatmeal followed by a four-hour nap.

He woke up to bright sunlight and groaned.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.”

If by awake, Rodney McKay meant not asleep, then yes, he was awake. He sucked in as deep a breath as he could through the nasal cannula itching his upper lip, felt his ribs stretch and his lungs expand. At the exasperated sigh coming from the end of his bed, he opened his eyes and squinted at his teammate standing with hands on hips and staring back at him with intensity.

“Hmmmm,” John moaned, hoping McKay took it to mean…something. He wasn’t sure what.

“You look like crap,” McKay said instead, walking up to his side.

“You sure do know how to brighten someone’s day,” John rasped, but on the sleep-wake continuum, he was definitely swinging well toward the awake side, despite the exhaustion pulling him heavily into the bed.

“Oh, I’m sorry. That came out wrong. Let me try it again,” McKay answered, almost pleasantly. He pulled up a chair next to the bed and plopped down, throwing his feet up on the side. “Why Sheppard, I do believe your current appearance could give the Sexiest Man Alive a run for his money in that magazine contest.”

“I knew you were the one ordering that magazine. Like we’d believe it was Teyla.”

McKay had been looking smug, leaning back in that chair, but now he pointed a finger at John. “Ha! Don’t let Teyla’s galactic origins fool you. Just last week I listened to her and Jennifer discuss the latest news on Brangelina. It was…surreal.”

“Who?”

“Exactly.” The smug look was back. He scanned John again, his eyes settling on John’s injured leg, propped up but covered by the sheet. He nodded toward it. “Seriously, though, how’s your leg?”

John frowned, debating whether or not he should wiggle his toes to test out how much his foot and ankle still hurt. He decided against it, remembering suddenly the sharp agonizing burn of the sea urchin’s quills piercing his flesh.

“Hot,” he said instead. And it was hot. He had vague memories of the nursing staff sticking ice packs on it or around it. Something about it being swollen.

“Hot?”

“Achy.”

“Well, that’s…descriptive.”

“You want more?” John asked, raising an eyebrow.

McKay’s face blanched and he shook his head. “Not really, no.”

A nurse walked past at that moment, shooting him a death glare. McKay scowled in response and dropped his feet to the ground, and John got the distinct impression he’d missed an entire conversation between them. But really, he was tired, and if people weren’t going to speak out loud, he didn’t have the energy to read their minds.

“What I really came down here for—” McKay started.

“Oh, thanks.”

“—was to show you this,” the scientist finished unfazed. He dug into his pocket and held up a long, thin stone.

“The crystal!” John said, brightening. He held a hand out, wanting to touch the weird, glowing stone again. It wasn’t glowing anymore, and in the daylight was a foggy white—not quite opaque, but not really clear either.

“Do you have any idea what this is?” McKay handed it over.

It was cool to the touch. He glanced at McKay, then the stone, then McKay again. “Uh…a crystal?”

McKay rolled his eyes. “Have you, by any chance, noticed the plethora of Ancient technology around this city in the last few years?”

John stared, waiting for the scientist to get to the point.

“One of the integral components to all of them is crystals.”

John blinked, holding up the crystal with renewed interest. “That’s one of those?”

“Well, no. Not exactly,” McKay huffed. He was squirming in the chair, and John was not so tired that he failed to notice the scientist’s growing excitement. “We know Ancient technology requires vast amounts of energy and data storage, right? We also know it has something to do with the crystals, but we’ve never quite figured out how they packed all of that into these things. And believe me, we’ve tried. Nothing we’ve created has even come close to the same energy and storage capacity. I surmise that this is actually raw material for those finished crystals.”

“Cool,” John smiled. The pump hooked up to his IV automatically pushed painkillers and whatnot into his body, and he felt the sudden, heavy drag across his body that signaled another dose had just been dispensed. He gave himself two minutes—three tops—before he was sound asleep again, whether McKay was done talking or not.

“Very cool,” McKay said, oblivious to the fact that he was about to lose his audience. “Now that we know where they started and what it looks like when they’re finished, we can make some headway on filling in the blanks in between.” He reached for and plucked the crystal out of John’s lax hand before he dropped it. “You had three of these in your pocket—this was the biggest one. There wasn’t by any chance more where you found them, was there?”

John flashed to the glowing pool room, and his one, brief visit into the hot room where the saber-toothed turtle lived. “Oh, yeah,” he breathed out.

“Really?” McKay sounded almost suspicious, and he narrowed his eyes at John.

John nodded. “More than you can imagine. Rooms full of them—they were growing all over the rocks. One room had hundreds of them the size of trees. And they glowed. They were even warm.”

The look on the scientist’s face was one John would not forget for a long time. “This is amazing,” he squealed, grinning like a little boy on Christmas morning. “You’re not messing with me are you?”

“Not messing,” John answered, solemn. He blinked heavy eyelids.

McKay jumped up and the chair skittered noisily across the floor behind him. “Oh my God. We have to go back there. Feel better or whatever.” He tapped his earpiece as he began walking away. “Zelenka—”

“Watch out for the saber-toothed turtle,” John called out.

“What?” McKay stopped, spinning around to stare at him.

“Turtle. Teeth. Rocks.” John waved his hand, lethargy sweeping over him. He was supposed to call Carson or someone when he woke up so that they could bring his lunch, and he was kind of hungry. A nap sounded way more satisfying. They’d make him eat later anyway.

McKay was staring at him, and John was pretty sure he didn’t believe him about the turtle creature.

“Uh, yeah, okay,” he answered, and he had that patronizing tone that John might have found irritating if he wasn’t half asleep.

McKay spun around, tapping his ear again. “Zelenka, there’s more of them. A lot more…”

His voice faded as he left the infirmary. John twisted half onto his side and curled up, careful to keep his injured foot immobile on its cushion of pillows. He took a deep breath as his eyes slid closed. Let McKay find the saber-toothed turtle on his own then. He’d have to make sure he told Ronon to tag along, or Lorne. Someone who’d give him the full reaction in detail afterward…

END

 

 _Prompt:_ Gen (although I don't mind passing reference to canon pairings), Sheppard alone somewhere, sick and/or injured, needs to use survival skills/wits - uses knowledge from military training or tricks he has learned from his team members to look after himself and survive, there can be enemies in it but I would most like to see Sheppard versus the environment and himself. The point at which rescue occurs, whether or not Sheppard has to survive with his team (or other characters such as Lorne) after they find him or goes straight back to Atlantis, or even if he is rescued or makes his own way back etc. is all up to the writer. Would like a comfort scene at the end.


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